washwords

Too cheesy to say “where the heart is” ?

Probably. But it’s true.

I’ve been thinking a lot about home lately. Not just because Nablopomo told me to think about it – it’s their theme for June, but ABOUT home. About where it is, how you know it, how you hold onto it, how you move to be sheltered by it when it shifts.

It started with a trip home. Well, to the home where I grew up, the town I grew up. “my hometown…. this is myyy home town…” It was a trip to take my boyfriend “home.” So where you grow up? That must be home.

On that trip, I went literally home, back to the source, to THE home, the physical home where I grew up; the home, serendipitously enough, that one of my very bestest friends in the 3rd, 4th, 5th grades had just purchased… with her husband…. and baby.

It filled me with joy. Here was the home where she and I had played. She could teach her son that the evergreen tree was hollow inside if you poked in just the right way, that the basement cabinets made an excellent clubhouse, that the spot to the left of the staircase was perfect for spying on whoever was below.

V had been there when my dad passed the rule “no more dr. scholls.” Too many girls were getting the think wooden heels of those monstrosities stuck on our thin deck and being catapulted into the backyard! She was there for birthday parties, scavenger hunts, t ball games and trips to ground round for sundaes in baseball caps.

I couldn’t wait to see it.

But I also was afraid. This was the home where my father, and my memories of him, lived. And it was the home where he died, making the brightest and shiniest of those memories hard to see and feel, even though they were there somewhere still. I didn’t think I would get to see this house again and I was so grateful to V for buying it, and more, for breathing life into it through her young family, particularly her little boy.

I worried that seeing the house, how small it probably really was in comparison to the largess of my imagination, would make the grandness of my memories shrink too. I worried that it would turn a vacation into a mourning period, for lost childhoods, my lost father. I worried that all the work I’ve done to finally, finally, slowly, achingly push past the grief and that little girl me, would be flooded over, drowned with the resurgence of emotion.

But it didn’t happen. V bounded down the stairs, nervous that she hadn’t cleaned up enough for me. She took us on a tour. Some things looked smaller, some closer or further; some had actually changed. Her husband and son came home, friendly and inviting and welcoming. Her son handed me some baseball cards, telling me who was who, then sat at his table in his dining room for peanut butter and jelly. It warmed my heart.

And I was flooded all right. With love, with hope, with heart. With home.

Look for more on “home” all this month